CORRECTED-COLUMN-MTV's Miley Cyrus mess, Donald Trump and the law, and who benefits from federal fines

(Corrects figure to $600 million in 14th paragraph)

By Steven Brill

Sept 3 1. Ask about the Miley Cyrus sleaze:

In the wake of MTV's universally-panned decision to feature
20-year-old Miley Cyrus in a cringe-producing sex pantomime with
36-year-old Robin Thicke during the telecast of the MTV Video
Music Awards, reporters ought to be sticking microphones in
front of producers and executives at MTV and its parent Viacom.

Using what the New York Daily News called "a foam hand as a
sexual prop," Cyrus's act was characterized this way by Mika
Brzezinski on MSNBC's Morning Joe: "That was not funny. That was
really, really bad for anybody who is younger and
impressionable. And she's really messed up, so I don't think
they should have put her on stage. They should be ashamed of
themselves...."

MTV's target demographics are teens and pre-teens. So
reporters should start with a simple question: Would the
producers and executives responsible for Cyrus's performance
have wanted their own teen or pre-teen children (or
grandchildren or maybe great-grandchildren in the case of
Viacom's 90-year-old founder and chief executive Sumner
Redstone) to have watched the show?

So far, MTV seems unembarrassed, at least officially. As of
this writing its website featuring a recap of the Video Music
Awards proudly headlines the show this way: "Miley Cyrus Twerks,
Gives Robin Thicke Some Tongue At VMAs." The write-up goes on to
call Cyrus's act a "festival of booty."

Are the people in charge of the "festival" really that
crass?

Beyond Redstone, high on my list of people who should be
questioned - even chased down, Mike Wallace style, if necessary
- would be MTV president Stephen Friedman. His bio on the MTV
website says he "launched mtvU's Sudan Campaign to fight
genocide in Darfur" and that before joining MTV he "served as a
Director for the PEN American Center (the international human
rights organization)." Seems like a sensitive soul whose
thoughts on his programming decision ought to be interesting.
2. Tallying a scorecard on the Donald and the law:

On August 27th, New York State Attorney General Eric
Schneiderman sued Donald Trump for $40 million, alleging that a
school for aspiring real estate moguls that Trump launched to
characteristic fanfare in 2005 engaged in "persistent fraud,
illegal and deceptive conduct." According to the Attorney
General, Trump's unlicensed school "promised to teach Donald
Trump's real estate investing techniques to consumers nationwide
but instead misled consumers into paying for a series of
expensive courses that did not deliver on their promises. More
than 5,000 people across the country who paid Donald Trump $40
million to teach them his hard sell tactics got a hard lesson in
bait-and-switch."

Trump has denied the charges and promises to fight them.

That last sentence, it seems, could be written about dozens
of civil suits over the years that have charged Trump with all
varieties of misconduct and misrepresentation in running his
far-flung businesses.

Indeed, search "Donald Trump lawsuits" and you get 394,000
Google results. Of course, many of the Donald's legal battles
produce hundreds or even thousands of these search hits because
they are so widely publicized. Besides, Trump seems to sue as
much as he gets sued, regardless of how serious his grievance.
For example, he sued HBO's Bill Maher for welching on an offer
Maher made during a comedy riff to donate $5 million to charity
if Trump, a relentless Obama birther, would produce his own
birth certificate. (Trump soon dropped the case.)

Trump has also successfully defended many claims against
him, such as the verdict he won in May after being sued for not
paying cash incentives that he promised investors in a Chicago
condominium. The jury found that a clause in the contract gave
him the right to withdraw the incentive.

With all of these ups and downs, it would be great for a
reporter to dig up the court records behind those web search
results and give us a Trump scorecard. Is he more often found to
be an unfairly accused deep pocket, or is there a string of
settlements and verdicts that suggest that Schneiderman may be
going after a recidivist con man? Either way, a good story.
3. Federal fines: Where does the money go?

The Financial Times reported last week that the U.S.
Federal Housing Finance Agency is demanding that JPMorgan pay a
fine of $6 billion "to settle allegations it mis-sold securities
to government-backed mortgage companies." Even in Washington
that's a lot of money - about four times the SEC's budget and
about 75 percent of the FBI budget. In fact, with other fines
looming, JPMorgan could end up coming close to funding the
entire FBI this year or covering two years of the Federal
Reserve's net operating expenses.

The FT report reminds me of a story I think about whenever I
read about the millions or even billions in fines lately
dropping into the government's coffers. A few other examples:
the SEC is said to be seeking $600 million for JPMorgan's
conduct in the London Whale trading fiasco; UBS recently agreed
to pay the Federal Housing Finance Agency $885 million;
drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $3 billion last year for
various marketing misdeeds; and BP received a record $4 billion
criminal penalty apart from its far larger settlement of claims
related to the damage it caused in the Gulf.

So where does all that newfound money go? What's the total
for the current year? How much has it been increasing? How much,
if anything, did the Office of Management and Budget anticipate
this year? Assuming there's a multi-billion-dollar surplus,
which lucky government agencies get it? I bet there's a lot of
Capitol Hill and bureaucratic wrangling about all that.
(Steven Brill)

WASHINGTON, Dec 9 Aetna Inc's chief
executive denied on Friday that its withdrawal from some
Obamacare exchanges was in retaliation for government efforts to
halt its merger with Humana Inc, as he sought to
convince a federal judge to approve the deal.

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